


JWP 2020 #12: American Cousins

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic, References to Real People, Story: His Last Bow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25235590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: I was asked to travel to the United States once.  Written for JWP #12 over on Watson's Woes.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Watson's Woes JWP Collection: 2020





	JWP 2020 #12: American Cousins

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Travelogues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/874682) by [methylviolet10b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b). 



> **Warnings** : References both His Last Bow and my story Travelogues from a previous JWP. It might make more sense if you're familiar with those, but probably stands on its own. And written in a huge rush. You have been warned.
> 
> **Prompt** : From Kandahar to Tokyo: Set your offering in a locale other than England (or in the case of adaptations that have Holmes based in another country, that country) today.

I was asked to travel to the United States once, or at least advised to do so. Mr Clemens waxed rhapsodic about his country and countrymen, and even promised that I’d find Yankee ingenuity a challenge in the criminal classes. 

“it would take a great storm of crime indeed to bring me in the flesh to such distant shores,” I told him then, and meant it. After my three years exile, London and Watson were more than enough for me. Cases called us all over the country and to the Continent, but never so far afield. Eventually retirement appealed more than excitement. Watson and I faded together into the countryside, shielded doubly by a remote cottage and a fictitious divergence of lives.

Yet Mr Clemens proved a prophet for all that. My brother saw the oncoming wave, not of crime but of war. He made me see it too. And so I find myself in America after all. There is a great deal of ingenuity to admire in Clemens' countrymen, as he said, but I do not find the desperate tangle of criminal doings, international conspiracy, and spywork any the more charming for its complexity. Not when the fate of the world is at stake, and not when I know I must unravel this massive knot to its core before I will ever see my home and my Watson again.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 12, 2020. Mr Clemens is, of course, better known by his author name of Mark Twain.


End file.
